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Leftovers
 
Corning Trying to Catch Up in UTG
December 01, 2019
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Last week, we interviewed Lori Hamilton, Director, Corning and asked about the company’s plans for Ultra-Thin Glass (UTG).  All Lori would say is that “they were working on it”. But this week, Scott Forrester, Division Vice President, Marketing and Innovation Products at Corning was more forth coming and told GSMArena that it plans to have some working glass designs in 12 to 18 months. According to Forester, the challenge with glass in this application is that the folding form factor has a lot of variables (i.e. bending radius, impact resistance, and thickness) that need to be finalized so the glass can conform to this particular purpose. Since there is no standardized folding phone form factor, Corning needs time to figure out which compositions of glass will be the best for the application. The issue for Corning is that Dowoo Insys together with Schott are supplying UTG for Samsung’s next foldable smartphone, which is expected to be released in Q120 to be used as a replacement for CPI film as the screen protector. If this proves successful, Samsung could then begin using UTG in all of its smartphones as a replacement for Gorilla Glass challenging Corning’s Specialty Glass franchise. which represented about 16% of Q319 revenue and 18% of the quarter’s operating profits. Given the 12-18 month estimate for working glass designs, it likely puts them at least 2-3 years behind their competitors.